


Tenna's Vengeance

by KirbyPaint



Series: Tales of Eldrigar [5]
Category: Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirbyPaint/pseuds/KirbyPaint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tenna's done taking Yuki's shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tenna's Vengeance

“I’m glad you had no part in burying _her_ ,” she hissed, striking the still-open wound, “you would have mangled her corpse even more.”

 

Tenna stiffened – could a single person be so callous? Could Yuki truly see no further than her own selfish needs? She couldn’t believe it. That was too far. A voice from deep within herself – her conscience, maybe, or perhaps her newfound demonic spirit – whispered into her heart, ‘ _You can do something about this. Don’t let her say that to you.’_

 

‘I won’t,’ she thought back, and with a burst of power, sent a gale of wind toward the _irritation_ walking away from her. And Yuki certainly felt the wind, Tenna could tell it pushed her, but the damned heavy woman didn’t even flinch! She just shrugged it off! What a bitch!

 

 _‘Do more. You know you can.’_ Wherever this voice was coming from, if the voice was even real, it sure wanted Yuki knocked down a peg, and she certainly deserved it. A rush of power filled Tenna once more, and in an instant, she knew what to do.

 

“Get _out_ of here!” She yelled – or did she? She certainly thought she yelled… no, she just ­ _thought_! How could she have said anything with this flesh, this… traitorous mass of skin and muscle, still held within her jaws? No, it wasn’t spoken words or even the whisper-speak trick…

 

This was power projected straight into Yuki’s mind.

 

And that _definitely_ worked.

 

Tenna watched as Yuki halted in her tracks. A moment passed as Yuki appeared to process what had just happened, and it was in that moment that Tenna saw her opportunity arise. Yuki turned around in anger and – _yes, fear_! Even from this distance, Tenna could see the fear in Yuki’s eyes and even reflected on the rest of her face. Yuki rarely allowed her weaknesses to show, she noted, but she knew them when she saw them, and if any time was good to strike, it was now.

 

 _‘Show her what you’re made of,’_ the voice whispered, glee seeping into its tone. Tenna summoned even more of her newly-gained demonic power, and pulling on her rights as demon kind, proceeded to do exactly that. Her eyes widened and became even darker, if that was even possible, and the slight aura she now carried about her grew in intensity, a fierce wind whipping about her. She smiled, dropping the bit of her brother onto the ground, then turned her grin into a pure display of toothy aggression, making sure every pearly white was as visible as possible. Her wings stretched as far as they could as she straightened out her posture, bringing herself to her full five-foot- _eleven_ height.

 

All of this happened in the span of mere moments, but to Tenna and Yuki, it felt as if they were trapped in their own bubble. Well… Yuki was trapped. Tenna was the bubble-blower; and perhaps that was not the most appropriate of analogies but she knew for sure that she could pop Yuki’s ego bubble in an instant, and when her temporarily-permanent moment of demonic fear ended, she knew she’d done just that.

 

If Tenna didn’t know any better, based on the look on Yuki’s face she’d swear Yuki just watched herself die a hundred times. What else could she really be this afraid of? It didn’t matter, she eventually thought, as long as she finally learned to mind her own fucking business. Maybe this time, the lesson would stick.

 

* * *

 

‘ _Are you kidding me?_ ’ she thought as Tenna tried to blast her with air. This wasn’t the time for petty in-fighting. Tenna got her revenge with her brother, and now it was time to go take out Balthazar. Yuki continued walking toward the barred door, fervently trying to forget the past few minutes, and how similar they were to the incident three? four? days ago. How similar it was to Sami-

 

No. Not that. Not the time to think about that. She forced the grotesque imagery from her mind as she took the next step onward, but before her foot hit the ground, a _very nearby_ voice called out to her.

 

“Get _out_ of here!” It was Tenna’s voice, but Tenna was over… there… and the voice was so much closer…

 

At first, she grew indignant. How dare Tenna try to send her away after what she did to help protect Tenna from her crazy brother? The brother who was still not fully dead and therefore continued to be a very real threat! But Yuki quickly realized that this was so much more than what Tenna should have been capable of. She’d experienced the spy’s ventriloquism capabilities before, to great effect, but something about this was different, and darker.

 

Much darker.

 

As her foot hit the icy ground, it clicked – Tenna had somehow dug her way into Yuki’s mind. And though Yuki wouldn’t ever admit it out loud, that terrified her. She never really understood or even liked magic, but she knew its potential to be great, and in the hands of her allies it was a potent weapon. Magic even saved her life on more occasions than she could count, but just because it was helpful didn’t mean she had to trust it. And what Tenna was doing right now was very much not okay. It was invasive, it was rude, it was a breach of trust… much like what she had done to Ryota only days earlier with the demon/dragon ring.

 

And she was taking none of it.

 

However, for what was probably the first time since meeting Tenna, her berating words died in her throat as she witnessed firsthand the demon spy’s full ferocity. Even standing forty feet away, Tenna’s might was a sight to behold. Her massive wings filled the doorway as she drew herself up to her full height, and her terrifying grin would have sent any number of children running for the town priest. But it was her _eyes_ , her horrible eyes! Oh, of all the things Yuki wished she could unsee, watching Tenna’s eyes become such horrors had to be at least third on that list. The whites of her eyes (or blacks, as it now was) somehow shone with a bright… darkness. A darkness like a vortex that drew Yuki in, pulling her suddenly-limp body with demonic claws and threatening to never let her go. And the red! Oh, how bloody the red was! As if Tenna could see into her flesh and possess her very life force with her eyes alone.

 

In that instant, Yuki knew a few things. The first, and briefest, was that she had crossed a line. Maybe making that crack at Tenna wasn’t the best thing to do. Maybe Tenna could be hurting as badly as she was, but that didn’t seem likely, she hardly seemed upset. Grieving people don’t play catch-the-severed-head-

 

“No, don’t think of that,” a cool voice purred from behind her. Yuki instantly recognized it as her own, but she knew she hadn’t voiced those words. When she turned back around, she saw herself, dressed to the nines in the most formal of formalwear her empire had to offer. Her hair was long again, and left down, her artificially-curled hair freely flowing over her bare shoulders. She wore a stunning sleeveless red dress, one Yuki remembered desiring when she was younger. As she stood staring at her…self… she realized she couldn’t remember a time she’d looked so _beautiful_. For a brief moment Yuki was certain she’d just come back from a festival or even a wedding, but then she remembered that wasn’t possible, and how was she alone in a dark room talking to a copy of herself? She wanted to speak, but the sight of herself, combined with the dark room and confusing circumstances, left her without words.

 

Or maybe the other, fancier Yuki took the words for herself, for she continued to speak. “Instead, Yuki, focus on your country. You know, the country we were raised to defend? The one we spent our entire life training for, only to leave it all for, what? True love? You were hardly twenty, what could you _possibly_ know about true love? And besides, Sami never loved us, or she wouldn’t have jumped into bed with Tenna the first moment she was away from you. She would have looked for us. And you and Sami couldn’t have ever really loved each other in the first place, or she wouldn’t have trained as an assassin to kill us, and you wouldn’t have eventually murdered her. You couldn’t even recognize her when she was a foot away from us. Shouldn’t you be able to recognize the one person we promised to love forever?” By this time, the other Yuki had crossed the room, standing directly in front of Yuki. Other Yuki took one long, disdainful look at her bloody, bruised, original self, and scoffed.

 

“And you know something else? _You_ never looked for her. _You_ were off being a guard-for-hire, off on some random continent where our past couldn’t hurt us. But we couldn’t even do that job right, either! We let your charge get killed, all thanks to your negligence, and even our vow to kill the person who ruined our sad, lonely life went unfulfilled!” Other Yuki trailed one finger down Yuki’s chin, attempting to remove some of the tears that streaked down her face. She glared at them, as if daring the tears to continue to exist, but Yuki was powerless to stop their flow.

 

“Remember that? You vowed to kill the person who killed your charge, yet the next time we saw her we let her free from prison! And even later, when we _finally_ realized who she was, you couldn’t do it, because our brother, a wonderful human being, threw his life on the line to protect a poor girl he really didn’t even know.

 

“Our brother, who constantly puts aside his own feelings and thoughts to help us through all of yours. He’s got his own demons to worry about, you know this. Not as literal as Tenna’s, of course, but what he’s gone through is monumental in its own way. And you’ve, what, carved him a toy? For his birthday? Good job being there for him like we said we’d be. He’s been there for us all the times you’ve failed. All of them. And there’s a lot of them.” Yuki tried to pull her chin free from Other Yuki’s grasp, but her will was too weak and the grip too strong. Other Yuki sneered at the feeble attempt to break free and squeezed her chin even tighter in response.

 

“Remember the time you left your country? Just wanted to remind you that, yeah, you did that. You left everyone, and you think they’d ever want you back? _Need_ you back? No, you just left the country in our parents’ hands. And they’re dead now. Who knows when that happened? Not you, because you weren’t there. And what’s happening with our parents, Yuki? Our mother is a Death Knight, probably working directly with Balthazar. She’s actively working with the power trying to end the world, that’s how much she wanted to distance herself from you, how much she hated what you’d become. And our father? For someone who said he loved us, you’d think he’d give _you_ of all people his bracelet. It looks like he couldn’t even trust you with _that_ , now, could he? He gave it to our illegitimate brother, _and he only met him twice_!”

 

Other Yuki shoved Yuki away from her in disgust and turned her back on her. Yuki stumbled, but caught herself before she fell, and sent her clone a look of absolute hatred. If only she had her sword with her, then she could put an end to this cruel image’s words! Her other self was utterly defenseless, and she… also had no armor. But at least she wasn’t about to fight in a dress… Where did her sword go?!

 

“Maybe our father really did know what was best for the kingdom. He’d ruled it for so long, and didn’t trust you with that information, either. Maybe he knew what path you’d take on the way to get back home – a path enriched by darkness and demons. There were better ways, but you took the worst way. False strength inhabiting demonic armor, earned from a pact with, of all beings, the Lady of Shadow. And that ring… way to go, alienating our last living friends. But you never really had that many, anyway. And these ones will just leave you, if you live long enough to take out Balthazar and Evelyne. They won’t go home with us.” Other Yuki sounded almost sad for a moment, but her words, her brutal, cutting, _words_ … nothing could stop the onslaught. Yuki cringed ever harder as the statements imprinted themselves in her brain. It’s all true, it’s all real, how could she have let herself fall so far from what she was supposed to be?

 

“But good luck with ever getting home. The lich will be strong. Balthazar is strong. They’re so incredibly strong, who’s to say they won’t just destroy us as soon as they see us coming? And what about Brom? He was strong, but was he strong enough? Did they torture him? Take him out while you were arguing about who got to bury whose ex? And what will you say if he’s still alive? ‘Sorry we didn’t come get you sooner, buddy, I just wanted to make some terrible life choices before we got here a second too soon!’”

 

From the corner of her eye, Yuki saw a glint, and even through the darkness, she could recognize the dream sword. She raised a solitary hand and summoned the blade to her. Other Yuki still hadn’t turned back around, her hands were thrown in the air after that mocking rant, and with one swift thrust she impaled herself. Her other self. The blood poured quickly and easily from her copy’s body, but the dress her copy wore was such a close red that the only reason Yuki even knew that was due to her stained hands.

 

Other Yuki stared down at the blade protruding from her body. “Oh, well, it looks like our time together is over now. But I’m not leaving, no, far from that. I’ll stay here with you, waiting for you to slip up, to make one wrong decision. You’re good at that, you made bad decisions just a few minutes ago. You couldn’t stop a one-handed-man from getting the better of you, and we’re stronger now than ever before. What good can you really do against someone with two hands? Anyway, it’s been fun. I’ll tell all our loved ones you said ‘hi,’ and that you’re sorry your choices got them killed. Until next time, Princess.”

 

* * *

 

 

Yuki awoke, or had a realization, or snapped back into her mind, as Tenna’s demonic fear suddenly ended. ‘That… was bizarre,’ she thought, shaking her head a bit to clear her vision fully. She stood up (when did she sit down?) from the corner of the room (when did she get to the corner??) and noticed Julian staring at her with a concerned look on his face. She clenched her fists, feeling them straining far more than they should have been, and as she glanced down at them, she saw various cuts and bruises that she could have sworn weren’t there when they fought Quill.

 

"Yuki, are you okay?" she heard Julian ask, and in that moment, she _remembered_. She remembered absolutely fleeing in terror from Tenna’s dark gaze, trying in earnest to open the barred door. When that didn’t work, and punching the bars a few times _also_ didn’t work, she attempted to escape to the corner, fervently hoping that it would be far enough away from the demon stuff to clear her mind. But it wasn’t, and she could do nothing but curl up in a ball as all her insecurities and fears compounded on her at once. She remembered Julian and Ryota splitting up, with Julian coming to her and Ryota going to talk with Tenna, and she even remembered having a full (but still pretty one-sided) conversation with him. She frantically spoke everything she was thinking, but his words of comfort, no matter how true, couldn’t quell the maelstrom within her mind.

 

And she _definitely_ remembered what happened in her mind.

 

But that was what just happened, not what was about to happen. She steeled herself – there was no good going into a fight feeling like she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. After she took a few calming breaths, she turned back to Julian and gave him a small, yet honest smile.

 

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> yuki maybe actually deserved this one......


End file.
